Turkey Red AN INTRODUCTION introduction The first printed fabrics were produced in India and China around 4000 years ago although it was only in the tenth century that textile printing arrived in Europe. It was not until printing became cheaper that it became popular; patterns were usually the result of embroidery or weaving. The industrial revolution produced huge advances in technology which made the production of fabric much cheaper and easier. As the industrial revolution in Glasgow summer months. Seasonal workers from gained pace, the textile industry became Argyll were employed as there were very affected by the pollution in the air and few inhabitants of the Vale at this time. water. Clean air and water were needed so that cloth and yarn could be washed Cotton was becoming increasingly and dried, a process that had to be done popular as fashion changed from heavy outdoors. The Vale of Leven provided materials, especially linen, to light, easily plenty of clean water as the fast-flowing washable fabrics. This was partly due to River Leven originated in Loch Lomond the expansion of trade with the US, which and the rural air was clear. increased the amount of cotton available. The first cotton arrived in Glasgow in the Andrew Johnstone established the first 1760s and by the 1830s linen bleachfields in the Vale at Dalquhurn in manufacture had disappeared from 1715 these were acquired, in 1728, by Glasgow as cotton took over. As the Walter Stirling and Archibald Buchanan fashion for cotton developed, demand who established the Dalquhurn Bleaching grew for it to be dyed and printed so Company and extended the bleachfields that the cloth could be made into to more than 12 acres. clothing etc. Bleaching became only one step in the process. Early bleach works were simply fields intersected by channels of water with The first printworks in the Vale were rows of beech hedge between them. The established at Levenfield by Todd, cloth was spread out on the grass and Shortridge and Company. Two years water from the channels, as well as soured later, in 1730, William Stirling, nephew milk, was sprinkled over it. The hedges of Walter, moved his printworks from prevented the cloth from being blown Maryhill to Renton. He feued the lands about. This was a seasonal activity as of the Cordale Printworks and then took cloth could only be outside during the over Dalquhurn Works for bleaching. Printing, at this time, was either by block By the beginning of the nineteenth printing or pencilling. century block printing was being overtaken my the copper roller method Block printing originated in Asia over of printing and, for a while, the methods 4000 years ago and was the most were used together. Today only printing widespread form of printing until the for exclusive designs would use the block early nineteenth century. It is a very printing method. versatile printing method capable of producing a variety of colour effects and Pencilling was widely used in India where patterns. The earliest blocks had designs a brush or bamboo pen was used to paint cut into their surface which could be dye onto the fabric. These began to be surprisingly intricate. The main imported into Europe in the late sixteenth development in block printing was the century where the floral motifs formed use of metal pins and strips hammered the basis of the early printed designs in into the surface of the block to form the Europe. Pencilling supplemented block designs. Metal castings followed which printing and was popular until the early fitted together on the block, these were nineteenth century. cheaper but could only be used for designs repeating a small pattern. The fabric was gummed to a flat table and the colour was applied to the block by the printer’s assistant, who was often a child. The block was placed carefully on the fabric before being struck with the shaft of a hammer, known as a maul. A different block was needed for each colour. methods of printing The technical term for a method of printing is a style. There are four main styles, these are: • Discharge • Direct • Resist • Dyed Discharge Style prevent the dye being absorbed. In batik, This involves the fabric initially being the areas are covered with wax which is dyed all one colour. A paste (called a removed after dyeing, a method very discharge paste) is then applied which common in Java and West Africa. Tie will destroy the colour, either by itself, or and dye is another method of the resist when submerged into a vat of another style in which the fabric is tied around chemical. The areas where the colour with a small cord. This method is still disappears are called discharged. These used in Africa, especially Nigeria, and was can be over printed with other colours extremely popular in Europe for much of or a colour can sometimes be added to the nineteenth century when a thick the discharge paste, which will paste of gum or pipeclay was used to simultaneously bleach one colour and make a pattern. add another. Dyed Style Direct Style This method was used in ancient Egypt In this process, the colour is printed onto and was still of great importance in the the fabric. The print paste contains the nineteenth century. It is based on the dye together with any other chemical use of dyes that need a mordant to fix that is necessary to fix the colour to the them onto the fabric. By using the same fabric fibres. The style was used very little dye but in different strengths and until the development of synthetic dyes. different mordants a wide variety of It is the most important style in use today, colours could be produced. This method when many fabrics are now printed with involves printing the fabric with a pigments rather than dyes. The process mordant followed by immersion in a dye is cheap but not easy and the results are and then washing. This style was mainly sometimes not of the highest quality. used with the dye madder and Turkey Red is a good example of the use of this Resist Style style. This involves masking areas of fabric to the introduction of turkey red George Mackintosh introduced Turkey Red to Scotland in 1785. He invited Pierre Jacques Papillon, a chemist from Rouen, to Scotland to show him the dyeing process. They set up Dalmarnock Works (later renamed Barrowfield) with David Dale and this became the first Turkey Red works. At this stage, only plain Turkey Red cloth and yarn were dyed. In 1805 they sold to Henry Monteith who manufacturers had to weave checked already possessed a Turkey Red factory cloth with yarn that was already dyed in Blantyre as well as a factory in and then put the woven cloth through Bridgeton. By 1823 he could produce 224 the finishing process. Patterns were added handkerchiefs every ten minutes and when customers took their fabrics to a exported most of them to Europe, where shop or dye works and selected patterns instead of being known as pullicates, they from the pattern books. Designs were were known as Monteiths. The pattern printed using carved wooden blocks with of the handkerchiefs - red with white a different block for each colour, or spots - became internationally famous engraved copper plates. In 1783 Thomas and bandanas and scarves were also Bell of Glasgow invented a process that produced. These were first made using printed continuous lengths of cloth but the tie-dyeing method and were this was not widely used until the imitations of earlier imports from Bengal. nineteenth century. It was not until 1827 when the next major At this time, only cotton yard could be breakthrough occurred. The Croftingea dyed. The reason for this is that the oil Works announced that it had produced (mordant) used to bind the yarn and the dyed yarn in a commercial process and dye had to be applied evenly. Woven this was closely followed by Dalquhurn material could only be dyed after 1810 the following year (which, by 1850, was when there were improvements in the using 130,000 gallons of bulls’ blood process. The yarn was taken to the dye annually). By the late 1820s the Vale of works by the cotton factories, dyed and Leven was well known for the production then returned to their factories. By the of Turkey Red. end of the nineteenth century cotton, calico and velvet were being produced Production costs could be kept down if and the Vale had developed into a the cotton yarn could be woven and dyed specialised industry. red afterwards. In the eighteenth century By the 1830s cloth printed in two colours The textile industry in the Vale was split became the main material for the clothing into two groups: of working class women. With the invention of new technology, the • The Turkey Red group consisting of development of new dyes and printing Croftingea, Levenbank, Cordale, methods, colourful fabrics became Dalquhurn and Dillichip available to everyone. • The Calico Printers’ Group of Dalmonarch, Levenfield, Ferryfield and In 1835, John Orr Ewing leased Croftingea Kirkland. and was so successful that he retired ten years later with a mansion and estate he There were many different types of job bought for £20,000. He gave his brother, in the works including printers, engravers, Archibald, enough capital to lease pattern drawers and cutters, colourmen, Levenbank Works. He named the dyers, bleachers, steamers, tearers, company Orr Ewing. He went on to buy machine men, hurlie men, stove men, Milton in 1850 and Dillichip in 1866.